While high energy density battery chemistries such as lithium-ion are a dominant energy storage technology in small-scale applications such as consumer electronics, these chemistries have not yet dominated larger-scale applications such as automobiles and stationary grid storage. Two of the major remaining challenges facing many of the high performance battery chemistries are cost and safety, and the battery field has made great efforts to search for new materials chemistries to make strides in one or both of these areas.
Our group has a major focus on controlling the morphology of battery particles, and in understanding how the morphology of particles influences battery performance in a variety of cell designs. While we also must understand and adapt next-generation materials chemistry advances, one of our goals is to be able to incorporate new advances in energy storage materials chemistries to improvements in particle design and particle morphology. In this talk, recent efforts in our group to control battery particle morphology and composition will be described, as well as some of the target cell geometries for these battery materials.